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Monday, February 3, 2014

Qatar’s sports-focused public diplomacy backfires

A perceived lack of real progress in the improvement of conditions
for foreign labour, aggravated by a Qatari reluctance to engage in public
debate beyond platitudes, is undermining the soft power goals underlying the
Gulf state’s sports strategy.

The silver lining in the public relations beating Qatar is
taking is that it forces international sports associations like FIFA, the world’s
governing soccer body, to include issues of labour and other rights in their
policy towards hosts of mega events like the 2022 World Cup. That was already
evident last year when the International Olympics Committee (IOC) rejected
Qatar’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics, in part, according to labour activists,
because of workers’ material conditions.

FIFA, in its latest response to persistent media reporting
on onerous living and working conditions of foreign workers who constitute a
majority of the Gulf state’s population and are building vast infrastructure
projects some of which are World Cup-related, demanded this week that Qatar report
in its progress on improving living and working circumstances.

The report intended to inform testimony in mid-February in
the European parliament by FIFA executive Theo Zwanziger, a former German
Football Association head critical of the awarding of the World Cup to
Qatar. FIFA, whose executive committee
is expected to take up the issue on March 20, needs to demonstrate that Qatar
is making true on pledges to improve workers’ conditions and loft words embodied
in a series of statements and charters.

“FIFA expects to receive information on the specific steps
that Qatar has taken since FIFA President Blatter’s last trip to Doha in
November 2013 to improve the welfare and living conditions of migrant workers,”
FIFA said in a statement.

In response to a three-year old campaign by the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and human rights groups as well
as media reporting spearheaded by Britain’s The Guardian, Qatar has pledged to
increase the number of inspectors overseeing the implementation of existing
rules and regulations. These provisions are widely viewed as meeting
international standards despite widespread criticism of the kafala or
sponsorship system that significantly restricts workers’ freedom of movement
and ability to change jobs.

Qatar has also drafted a number of charters of workers’
rights, the most ambitious of which is that of the Qatar Foundation that,
according to people involved in its drafting, seeks to structurally alter a
labourer’s migration cycle which involves corrupt middlemen and company human
resource officers. The problem is the foundation has never published the
charter nor reported on progress it has made in making the migration cycle less
onerous.

FIFA’s request for a progress reports follows a report in
The Guardian’s Sunday paper, The Observer, according to which 185 Nepalese
construction workers died last year as a result of onerous labour conditions.
That would bring the number of reported Nepalese deaths over the last two years
to 382. Trade unionists have focused on the Nepalese community because it accounts
for up to one quarter of Qatar’s two million inhabitants. Nepalese rank among
the lowest paid workers in Qatar.

“We are currently in the middle of an intensive process,
which is exclusively aimed at improving the situation of workers in Qatar. Ultimately,
what we need are clear rules and steps that will build trust and ensure that
the situation, which is unacceptable at the moment, improves in a sustainable
manner,” Mr. Zwanziger said in a statement.

The public relations beating of Qatar stems from the Gulf
state’s apparent inability to draw conclusions from a failed communications
strategy ever since winning its World Cup bid. Qatar failed initially to
anticipate the criticism of its success driven by questions about the integrity
of its bid as well as envy and jealously by those who had unsuccessfully competed
against it. It subsequently surrendered the public relations battlefields to
its detractors by deciding not to engage in the false hope that criticism would
eventually subside.

The result is not only that Qatar is on the defensive but
that it has lost significant ground in achieving a core

goal of its vast
investment in sports in general and soccer in particular: the projection of
soft power in a bid to compensate for a lack of hard power. Soft power is a key
Qatari defence and security strategy based on the realization that it will
never have the military strength to defend itself irrespective of what hardware
it acquires or the number of foreigners it recruits to populate its armed
forces.

Sports is central to a soft power strategy designed to embed
and endear Qatar in an international community in ways that would ensure that
the world would come to its aid in times of need much like a US-led force
expelled Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait in 1990. Qatar has so far missed
the plank with international public opinion associating it more with modern day
slavery than with being a cutting edge 21st century nation that is
contributing to the global good.

In an apparent decision to take more control of preparations
of the World Cup, Qatar’s 33-year old emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamid al Thani, a sports enthusiast and member of the IOC executive
committee, downgraded the Supreme Committee that had so far been in charge of
organizing the World Cup and created a new body chaired by himself and
populated by his appointees to oversee event and operational planning as well
as coordination with FIFA.

In many ways, Qatar, Nepal and other labour supplying
countries have much to gain from working together to tackle workers’ material
living and working conditions. Kanak Mani Dixit, a prominent Nepali journalist
and editor of the Kathmandu-based Himal, recently argued that Nepalese
authorities and civic groups were co-responsible by allowing abuse to occur.

“The job migrants of Nepal are entrapped not only by the
sponsor-manpower nexus but by a neglectful Kathmandu civil society and a
government that has floundered all these years when it comes to foreign affairs
and the protection of overseas citizens. The Kathmandu discourse on migrant
labour is marked by a sense of fatalism—the diffidence explained perhaps by a
fear of shaking the honey pot. The Gulf migrants are perceived as the luckier
ones, given that the poorest of all cross the open border into the employment
sump that is India,” Mr. Dixit wrote.

“While there is little or no possibility of collective
bargaining within the labour-receiving Gulf countries at this stage, the
sending countries including Nepal—individually and collectively—could cooperate
to demand better ‘migration governance’ in the GCC region. It is a delicate
task that requires research, diplomatic skill and committed activism—so that
the fundamental rights of the workers are protected without exposing Nepali
workers to formal or informal bans (as happened with Filipina workers, when
Manila sought to raise their base income),” Mr. Dixit said.

\“As a major labour exporter, Nepal must come out of the fog
and get involved in the accelerating discourse. Priority in foreign affairs
must be given to the relationships with the labour-receiving countries,
especially those of the Gulf and Malaysia. We must rise from the wreckage of
foreign affairs, including the appointment of incapable political-appointee
ambassadors, which has directly hurt the prospects of citizens working
overseas,” Mr. Dixit argued, calling for the creation of a ministry for foreign
employment.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University. He is also co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute
for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile